High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Ward Hunt Ice Shelf is the largest ice shelf in the Arctic, located on the north coast of Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada. During the 20th century the Ellesmere Ice Shelf broke up into six separate shelves, the largest being Ward Hunt. Ward Hunt Ice Shelf is about 155 square miles (400 km2) in size, and has been in place for approximately 3,000 years as part of a continuous ice shelf that encompasses the northern coast of Ellesmere Island until the beginning of the twentieth century. In 2005 one of the other shelves, the 25-square-mile (65 km2) Ayles Ice Shelf, calved completely.